A Mapping of Workers' Rights, Entitlements and Welfare in the Post-Civil War Northern Province of Sri Lanka

Abstract

The Northern Province of Sri Lanka is emerging out of a protracted and devastating civil war between July 1983 and May 2009, during which time almost one hundred thousand people died, a majority of them civilians, up to eight hundred thousand people were internally displaced, and another two hundred thousand people fled abroad as refugees. Additionally, most of the democratic institutions, including the collectivisation of labour, were decimated in the civil war affected Eastern and Northern Provinces of Sri Lanka. The inalienable human rights of the dispossessed castes, class, and gender of people of the conflict affected districts were submerged into the overarching cause of the “national liberation” struggle. The overarching objective of this mapping exercise is to identify the nature and extent of precarious labour in the conflict-affected Northern Province of Sri Lanka. In order to fulfill the foregoing overarching objective, the extent of collectivisation of labour (or lack thereof), labour struggles, health and safety facilities for labour (or lack thereof) at workplaces, the extent of monitoring of such health and safety facilities and labour entitlements by the regulatory authorities, and physical, psychological and social support systems for female workers (or lack thereof) were probed through questionnaire based interviews.